32 years after Roe v. Wade

32 years after Roe v. Wade, that’s my generation, you know. Gone, snuffed out. But we limit ourselves for some reason. By focusing on just that one Supreme Court decision it becomes easier to say there is nothing we can do about – we don’t have the right political leaders or the political leaders with enough backbone to stop it. So we content ourselves to feeling dreery about abortion this time every year, or when the head of a crisis pregnancy center speaks at church. I guess it’s a way of self-flaggelation.

I grew up in an area where it would be easy for conservative Christians to do more than pay lip service to abortion – take in the lonely, adopt the forgotten, support the single mother, develop a culture of life. But I know how hard the local crisis pregnancy ministry tried to just convince churches and individuals to donate reguraly.

I was always taught that if you are at an impasse, it’s maybe because you are approaching the problem from the wrong way, and then it should be time to ask the different questions:

Why are abortion opponents nearly always conservative Christians, and a sub-set at that? Should our case be so right that many securalists and adherents of other faiths join with us?

Why do we think that abortion began in 1973? Marvin Olasky has written a book about the history of abortion, perhaps we should think about why Christians did such a poor job of defending the innocents in the industrialized world that abortion would become a recognized choice. Remember, the Supreme Court issue all sorts of decisions, but Roe v. Wade just made abortion permisable. The government has never, to my knowledge, foreced anyone to have an abortion. A choice indeed.

Why do we care so little about abortion in the rest of the civilised world? China, Russian, much of the former Communist bloc in Eastern Europe, the materalists in Western Europe, etc. have all practiced abortion with little aparent compunction for over 50 years. Do we care?

Forget for the moment all the hub-pub about about political leaders, why we look to them to force us to stop our own wrong doing that goes against the most basic instincts I don’t know. Why can’t we create a more winsome, cheerful, self-sacrificial culture of life?

If abortion ended today by Supreme Court fiat and was sent back to state jurisdiction in the United States, would we care? Is this what holds us back from the least (sending a check to a crisis pregnancy ministry) or the most (networking with small numbers of folks to care for single mothers or adopt children)?

Yes, let’s be saddened at the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but let’s don’t let it become a permanent holiday.